2/7/14 Ocean City Today

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OC Today WWW.OCEANCITYTODAY.NET

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

SERVING NORTHERN WORCESTER COUNTY

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SOLID FINISH Stephen Decatur girls earn third place; boys finish fourth during Bayside Conference championship – Page 29

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City approves brewery if it meets conditions Project team makes changes to satisfy commission concerns

By Zack Hoopes Staff Writer (Feb. 7, 2014) If their beers come out half as frosty as the reception they’ve been getting from the city, the soon-to-be OC Brewing Company is almost guaranteed success. The proposal to install a brewery and restaurant in the old Adkins lumber yard on 56th Street gained final approvals from the city council and planning commission this week - but only with a number of added conditions that would suggest brewing beer in Ocean City is about as toxic as farming pigs in Chernobyl. “We have questions about why aren’t businesses coming into Ocean City…and here’s a business that wants to come in and invest,” said Mayor Rick Meehan. “Let’s not look at how it can’t be done, but how it can be done.” Despite being located in a commercial zone, the brewery is considered a “manufacturing” use, which requires express approval from the Mayor and Council and the Planning and Zoning Commission, both of whom may set specific conditions for operation. “You do have residential property owners around you, even though they built in a commercial zone,” Commission Chair Pam Buckley said Tuesday. “But we still don’t want them to be living in an industrial yard.” In fact, the brewery was subject to four separate reviews by the city. It first had to obtain a parking waiver from the Board of Zoning Ap-

peals, given that the city’s required parking for manufacturing exceeds what the brewery actually needs, having only a half-dozen employees for the brewing process itself. The project then went through a conditional use hearing before the P&Z Commission last month, another conditional use hearing before the council on Monday, and a final site layout review from the commission on Tuesday. “I think they’ve done a really, really good job on working out all the issues we saw in the initial hearing and in the Mayor and Council review,” said Commissioner Lauren Taylor. With only 24 hours between the final two sessions, the brewery’s designers were forced to work fast in order to present the P&Z Commission with a plan that integrated the changes requested earlier by the commission, as well as the conditions set by the city council the night before. See LAST-MINUTE Page 4

OCEAN CITY TODAY/NANCY POWELL

A MEATY CHORE Lions Ned Mumford, left, and Corey Smith make sausage Saturday morning during the annual Berlin Lions Club whole hog sausage sale.

‘Ping Pong’ premiere going national Ocean City-based ‘Ping Pong Summer’ picks up distributor

By Clara Vaughn Staff Writer (Feb. 7, 2014) After its Jan. 18 premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Ocean City-based “Ping Pong Summer” grabbed the attention of film distributors. Gravitas Ventures, part-

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nering with Millennium Entertainment, snatched the indie movie from the competition, with plans in the works to release it in at least 10 major markets across the country and for video on demand this summer. There will also be showings across Maryland, with a local premiere around the release date, Director Michael Tully said. Set in the summer of 1985, “Ping Pong Summer” follows

hip hop- and ping pong-obsessed teen Rad Miracle on vacation with his family. The family-friendly, coming-ofage story is set in the resort and residents and vacationers will see familiar spots from the Boardwalk and pier to Old Pro Golf and the Paul Revere Smorgasbord. “There are so many locations that you could actually go to after you watch the movie,” Tully said. “You can’t really talk about the movie

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without talking about Ocean City.” Before he left Sundance, the Maryland native had offers from a handful of distributors, but landed on Gravitas with an announcement on Monday. “Gravitas really, really seemed to get the movie right away. They dug it. They got the humor and thought that it was not just a Maryland movie,” Tully said. “They’re See PING PONG Page 6 We Service All HVAC Brands

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